It’s Saturday night, you’re
somewhere downtown, and the
bathroom line is long. Like, 15 people
long. Some are staring at their phone,
some are glancing out at the dance
floor wistfully, like kids in detention
watching recess. The woman in front
of you is wearing the most incredible
red lipstick you have ever seen, a
vibrant red that skews orange when
the strobe light hits. Not too matte,
not too shiny. Is it Dragon Girl? You
don’t know, but you have to ask.
So you do. What unfolds is natural:
The two of you share a tenuous but
palpable bond, right there, in the
bathroom line, over that red lipstick.
You were looking for something,
somebody else discovered it, and you
found that person. Chatting about
lipstick turns into chatting about
life. Maybe you become friends, or
maybe you never see each other
again. But you got the shade name.
And the horizon of your world
spreads a bit broader.
Until you find out Dragon Girl wasn’t
a girl at all, but an influencer planted
there to tug on that thread of beauty
curiosity. Or a robot programmed to
spew praise at anybody it registers as a
human woman age 28 to 40 with an
annual income of $50,000 or more in
the American Midwest. Or a lipstick
brand masquerading as a beauty
reviewer on a large retailer’s website.
“The perfect red-orange,” she says.
“Just the right amount of matte-to-
shine ratio!”
To read online beauty reviews is to
negotiate such potential minefields.
The question is not whether reviews
can be faked. We know they can,
because they have been. Last year, a
Reddit user claiming to have worked
at skin-care brand Sunday Riley
posted what appeared to be an email
with the subject line “Homework
Time—Sephora.com Reviews.” It
walked employees through a step-by-
step process on how to hide their
IP address (an easy maneuver to make
it appear that you’re using your
computer in, say, Japan, when in fact
you’re at home in Hoboken), leave a
minimum of three reviews for one of
the brand’s newest products, and,
perhaps, mention specific qualities of
the product that had been maligned in
other legitimate reviews. Within 48
hours, Sunday Riley confirmed the
veracity of the email, saying it was
indeed sent by a former employee and
they would be “making an effort
to bring more transparency” to their
customers. They added that it would
have been “physically impossible”
for them to have had employees post
even a fraction of the thousands
of online reviews of their products.
“We committed in 2018 to publicly
releasing audits of our business
practices and ethics,” the brand told
Allure in an email. Now employees
are discouraged from leaving reviews,
and if they choose to do so anyway,
they are obligated to disclose their
employment with the brand.
Interviews with beauty
entrepreneurs, site managers,